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This portrait of the Robert Follett Gerrish House in Kittery Point, Maine, is one of a number of nocturnal paintings, or \'moonlights,\' that Metcalf produced after 1906. These romantic pictures of New England houses at night were popular with the public, yet Metcalf painted only a few, as he found them extraordinarily difficult to complete. In 1918 he wrote to Freer that he had one of the rare and precious works in his studioa painting of \'an old house partly in shadow, with white lilacs in bloom,\' which he had begun several years earlier but finished only that season. Freer readily agreed to buy The White Lilacs and when it reached him in Detroit he declared it a masterpiece. When seen among works of Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Chinese art in his collection, the moonlight appeared to Freer \'perfectly at home,\' and he wrote Metcalf a gracious letter expressing the wish that the artist were there \'to enjoy its beauty and to feel its relationship to Far Eastern productions.\'

PUBLIC DOMAIN: This artwork is in the public domain (not copyrighted) because all artworks by Willard Leroy Metcalf are in the public domain.

Artist copyright

PUBLIC DOMAIN: This person died over 70 years ago (in 1925).

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